My auto accident recovery group meets three days a week for one hour. Issues include coping with posttraumatic stress disorder, physical pain, depression, loss of preinjury lifestyle and family adjustment. The group is open ended and new members join as needed.
Related conditions include depression, anxiety, physical pain, relationship difficulties, addictions and cognitive disorders.
Individuals with PTSD and TBIs are often confused. They feel overwhelmed, helpless and stigmatized. Friends and family often do not understand their difficulties which causes painful isolation. It is essential to connect with professionals who understand their conditions and needs, and who can provide the appropriate treatment to speed recovery.
Have you woken up with a stiff neck, and thought it was due to your sleeping position? Do you experience back pain with no explanation, or struggle with anxiety/panic without knowing the cause? If so, it is likely your body has been trying to communicate to you that something is wrong. Unfortunately, most of us lost the ability to understand mind-body communication after infancy. When we lose the ability to communicate with our body, the daily stress and worry we carry become toxic and manifest into physical ailments. Psycho-Somatic exercises teach you how to understand this communication before these physical ailments manifest.
Hosted by Sean Patrick McGraw
Clinical Social Work/Therapist, LMSW, BSW, SAT, CRC, INT
Group meets in Saint Clair Shores, MI 48081
Are you feeling more anxious, or fatigued? Experiencing less motivation. Do you feel lonely? Are you worried about your career, or relationship? Have your coping strategies turned self-destructive? I can help you feel confidence and security once more. I provide a safe, comfortable, non-judgmental, supportive, and respectful therapy that empowers and reduces stress to get you back on track. Because your time is such a valuable commodity, my approaches are very structured and goal oriented.
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Chronic Pain Support Groups
How does chronic pain therapy work?
Engaging with a psychotherapist to help treat chronic pain does not mean that one’s pain is all in their head. Therapy for chronic-pain patients has been shown to benefit both the mind and the body, targeting physical symptoms and increasing daily functioning. In other words, for many, addressing their emotional health through therapy affects their physical health. A therapist can help a client challenge unhelpful thoughts about pain and develop new ways to respond to it, such as distraction or calming breathing techniques. Studies have found that therapy can be as effective as surgery for certain cases of chronic pain and many doctors recommend trying psychotherapy in advance of considering invasive surgery.
What are the most effective treatment options for chronic pain?
Stress, anxiety, depression, catastrophizing, ruminating, lack of activity, and social withdrawal all make chronic pain worse. Addressing these issues, research shows, can help people gain control over their pain symptoms. Therapeutic approaches such as cognitive behavioral therapy, biofeedback, and mindfulness-based stress reduction, along with greater pain-management education, have been found to help people reduce fear and disability.
Are there new treatments for chronic pain?
Many cases of chronic pain, particularly those involving back pain, remain medically unexplained. But there is evidence that changes in the brain or nervous system are caused by previous physical ailments such as tissue damage; in such cases, the brain may continue to send out pain signals despite the physical cause having healed. To aid patients under these circumstances, a recently developed treatment known as pain reprocessing therapy (PRT) is designed to help the brain “unlearn” this response. A PRT practitioner helps individuals to reduce the “threat value” of their ongoing pain signals until they can reappraise them as less threatening and fear-inducing. They also help an individual to develop new emotional regulation skills.
How long does therapy for chronic pain take?
There is no set timeline for recovery from chronic pain, especially as there may be a range of physical and psychological causes for any individual’s discomfort, but most patients should expect to see a therapist for a number of weeks or months, typically spanning at least 12 sessions. Studies of pain reprocessing therapy found that many individuals’ experience of pain lessened in eight sessions over four weeks.